Explaining the 'Ghetto'

One might wonder how I arrived at my blog name--although I suspect any Family and Consumer Scientists probably understands. Our discipline (or collection of disciplines) has long been as invisible and marginalized as women themselves. I want to be clear: I did not coin this term. Anyone who's visited the Cornell Home Economics Archive website (http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/) has seen the quote by Joan Jacobs Brumberg from her book, "The Body Project: an Intimate History of American Girls." If you read the entire excerpt that's found there, you'll see that our history is long and proud. Home Economics has helped to change the world for the better and create opportunities for women that otherwise never would have existed. Is Family and Consumer Sciences the same cutting edge discipline that Home Economics once was? It might sound ironic, given what comes to mind when one thinks of Home Economics (housewives baking cookies, that sort thing), but I think perhaps we lost our edge. I don't think we lost it because of our name change. Quite the contrary: I think our name change was necessary in part because we lost our edge. We stopped being an organization of firsts: the first academic discipline to study home and family life, the first female university deans, the first female faculty trustees... and I guess we became complacent. After all, when you do good work, people will notice...right? Unfortunately, no. We faded into obscurity, and the name change helped to speed that along.

What do you think about Family and Consumer Sciences today? Should we reclaim our feminist roots? What are the issues today that Family and Consumer Scientists should take a leadership role in shaping? What are the issues that we aren't discussing at annual meetings but should be?

I don't want this blog to be about me. (Strange, I know, since blogs tend to be an exercise in narcissism.) I want to get people inside and outside of FCS talking again. In my wildest dreams, I'd like to get us mobilized. I'm new to this blogging thing. If you're out there, say something.